be easily deceived, and practitioners will be obliged to qualify
themselves better for their labors. The practice of medicine is every
year becoming more successful. New and improved methods of treating
disease are being discovered and developed, and the conscientious
physician will avail himself of _all_ the means, by a knowledge of which
he may benefit his fellow-men. The medical profession is divided into
three principal schools, or sects.


THE ALLOPATHIC, REGULAR, OR OLD SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.


This is the oldest existing branch of the profession. To it is due the
credit of collecting and arranging the facts and discoveries which form
the foundation of the healing art. It has done, and is doing, much to
place the science of medicine on a firm basis. To the text-books of this
school, every student who would qualify himself for medical practice
must resort, to gain that knowledge upon which depends his future
success. The early practice of this branch of the profession was
necessarily crude and empirical. Conservative in its character, it has
ever been slow to recognize new theories and methods of practice, and
has failed to adopt them until they have been incontrovertibly
established. This conservatism was manifested in the opposition to
Harvey when he propounded the theory of the circulation of the blood,
and to Jenner when he discovered and demonstrated the beneficial effects
of vaccination. Thus has it ever defended its established opinions
against innovation; yet out of this very conservatism has grown much
real good, for, although it has wasted no time or energy in the
investigation of theories, yet it has accepted them when established. In
this manner it has added to its fund of knowledge only those truths